Substance abuse treatment center uses acupuncture to aid detox

Emily Zoladz | The Grand Rapids PressGiving it a try: Grand Rapids Press reporter Jacqueline Prins closes her eyes in relaxation during her first acupuncture experience at Our Hope Association, where women's auricular (ear) acupuncture is routinely offered as part of the facility's substance abuse detox program. Prins, who is not part of the Our Hope detox program, received an acupuncture treatment as part of her research for this article.

Just breathe. Like many treatments meant to set our bodies and minds into relaxation mode, this one begins with the same simple instruction.

The difference is, with each meditative exhale, Heather Wiszczur (pronounced whish-cher) gently inserts another needle into the outer ear — a process known as auricular acupuncture, or acupuncture detoxification.

“We do it for substance abuse purposes,” Wiszczur said. “It’s detox in the acupuncture sense, an Eastern medicine approach to detox.”

While Our Hope has been offering acupuncture detoxification to its residential clients once a month for the past few years, it recently began offering Women’s Auricular Acupuncture Clinics, open to any woman in the public who would like the procedure done. The clinics are offered on the first and third Wednesdays of each month.

“We’ve offered it with an outside therapist for a long time, once a month, to our residential clients,” Wiszczur said. “And the clients just loved it.”

So Wiszczur, along with Our Hope Association’s Megan Besemer, also a certified advanced drug and alcohol counselor, decided to become trained through the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association in March 2010.

“We were interested in it, and we wanted it to be available to our clients more than once a month,” Wiszczur said. “Many people find this helpful to maintain sobriety. Some of the women in our clinics have many years of sobriety, even.”

During acupuncture detoxification, five needles are inserted into the outer ear lobe of each ear. Wiszczur plays calming music, during which, she says, clients have a chance to fully relax. In this way, acupuncture detoxification addresses more than just tension relief. It helps clients open up.

“The body language of being able to hold things in and keep them buried is very closed and very tense,” Wiszczur said. “When you relax, it becomes harder to hold on to that stuff.

“I’ve had clients that are working very hard to hold things in or keep them buried, and when they are going through this procedure, sometimes those defenses come down. We’ve had people become very tearful. Sometimes they want to talk about it; sometimes they don’t.”

“I’ve had clients say to me, ‘I don’t think I have feelings. You keep telling me to talk about these feelings, but I am pretty sure I don’t have them,’” Wiszczur said. “And they aren’t lying. It’s either been so long since they have accessed them or, maybe, they were never taught to do that.”

“These are different ways to help women relax and become more connected,” she said.

But the real question is: Is it helping?

While Wiszczur said measuring the results of auricular acupuncture can be very difficult because there are so many different points in the ear that acupuncturists use to treat different things, she said the clients’ feedback is positive.

One of those clients, a resident of Our Hope Association, said she has loved acupuncture detoxification since the first time she tried it.

“I was nervous at first,” said Liz, who asked not to use her real name. “But the yoga and the auricular acupuncture got me to open up. It was so relaxing.”

At the time of the interview, Liz was on Day 81 of her 90-day treatment program at Our Hope.

“I decided to get clean because my heroin addiction had gotten so bad, I had a grand mal seizure while I was driving,” she said.

Liz’s reaction to auricular acupuncture is not uncommon.

Stephen Durell, an acupuncturist with Acupuncture of West Michigan, said many of the patients he has worked with in acupuncture detoxification programs have been addicted to methadone or heroin.

“In my experience, I’ve had doctors and nurses tell me that patients who undergo this treatment are more likely to participate in group therapy,” he said.

Auricular acupuncture is used in the detoxification process, he says, because they can use the same five points on everybody. Therefore, non-acupuncturists can be trained to perform it, and patients can be treated in larger groups.

The length of acupuncture detoxification treatment can be different for everyone. It depends on what type of chemicals they are being treated for, the treatments they are using and what their goals are.

“I’ll often see patients that are quitting smoking, and they’ll come in three or four times during the course of two or three weeks,” Durell said.

“While auricular acupuncture can be helpful in dealing with substance abuse and trauma, I feel a more individualized approach is better,” he said.

Wiszczur also notes the importance of auricular acupuncture to the patients at Our Hope.

Founded in 1972, Our Hope Association provides residential treatment — for 30, 60 or 90 days — and intensive outpatient substance abuse treatment to women 18 and older. The center is staffed entirely by women.

“Sometimes, people don’t want to process stuff, and this is something they can do that can help them. And it doesn’t matter whether they are motivated or whether they are ready to talk,” Wiszczur said. “Auricular acupuncture can offer them a benefit right here and now.”

And talking, she says, is not always the intended goal of auricular acupuncture in the detoxification process.

Most importantly, she says, it is a time for clients to sit down, relax and, if nothing else, just breathe.